Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure

Summary

Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, sprang from an early passion for the derring-do and larger-than-life heroes of classic comic books. Now, once more mining the rich past, Chabon summons the rollicking spirit of legendary adventures-from The Arabian Nights to Alexandre Dumas to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories-in a wonderful new novel brimming with breathless action, raucous humor, cliff-hanging suspense, and a cast of colorful characters worthy of Scheherazade's most tantalizing tales.

They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can-as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. No strangers to tight scrapes and close shaves, they've left many a fist shaking in their dust, tasted their share of enemy steel, and made good any number of hasty exits under hostile circumstances.

None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado . . . not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution? The only certainty is that getting there-along a path paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of-will be much more than half the fun.

Reviews

I tried this first on audio but simply could not follow the plot, so I tried again on paper and found it a little bit easier. The trouble is that it's written like a 19th century novel, with excessively long sentences that require multiple readings (and often dictionary checks) in order to decipher. It's tiring and takes me out of the action. I'm sure it's a rollicking adventure for people who can keep up with the language. For me it was slog with occasional fun bits.

Adventure story done well. A nod to the stories Chabon read and loved as a youth. No wizards or magic, just a little gore and a prince, princess and a usurper--the old formula, good to read to your kiddies. You might censor a little, though.

Reminded me of Leiber though the characterizations were not quite as vivid. Still, I enjoyed the fantasy and the improbable adventure. These guys manage to take over their world and win our hearts. Wonderful illustrations!

Chabon is one of my favorite authors, and as such, I'll read just about everything he releases. So when I saw this, I had to pick it up.This is a "serial" novel of a swashbuckling tale set in the 10th Century Southwest Russia. Chabon said that his working title when he was writing these stories was, "Jews with Swords". When he learned of the history of this area and of the Jewish Khazar kingdoms, he was compelled to research and write about this era.The main characters are Amram (an African warrior/mercenary) and his friend and partner Zelikman (a German physician). During their travels, looking for work and adventure, they find themselves in the middle of a political power struggle and war in the kingdom of Arram. The series of what I would call vignettes were originally published in serial form in the New York Times magazine. While all connected, as you would expect from a magazine serial, they seemed a little disjointed to me in full book form, as if there were some missing pieces in between each section. At any rate, it was a very enjoyable read. It was interesting reading about the adventure/rogue tropes set against a society and geography that was completely new to me.8/10S: 1/3/15 - F: 1/15/16 (13 Days)

Alas - even though so much shorter than Chabon's other books, I ultimately found it no more readable! I read half of "Kavalier and Clay", and half of "Yiddish Policeman's Ball". I loved the former, but ultimately ran out of time and patience for it, and simply hated the latter. I picked up "Gentlemen of the Road" after learning about the possible connection between the Jews expelled from or escaping Israel around the 7th century and the Khazaars. As others have criticized, the writing is too confusing to follow the action among tribes and individuals that I really couldn't get a handle on. I didn't know who the "good" guys and "bad" guys were - who was chasing them, who was getting killed - it was just a 200 page, florid, mish-mash.I gave up half way through.

This was, not surprisingly as it comes from a true master, a great read. Much different than his (former?) usual, it's a fabulous adventure story, and a quick page-turner of a read. It's damn hard not to love the two unlikely would-be heroes, and let's face it, it's damn hard not to love the whole thing. The plotting & intrigue on all sides, the daring adventurers, the swindlers, the suspense...! Just an all-around fun absorbing read!

Back in the day, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union appeared on several genre award shortlists, IIRC, and I read it and thought it quite good. So I stuck The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay on my wishlist and some years later was given it as a birthday present. And then I read it, an embarrassing number of years after that, and was much more impressed. And shortly after that I found a copy of Gentlemen of the Road in a charity shop, so of course I bought it. And… Chabon writes in an afterword that to him the novel (a very short novel) was always titled “Jews with Swords”. Because to him Jews had never been associated with swords – at least not since Biblical times. I’ve never attached a religion to a weapon – people with swords are people with swords, and I’ve never really thought about the religious tradition from which they came, perhaps because in most cases in fiction that tradition was invented, and for those where it was not the context more than explained it. But “Jews with Swords” gives us a Frankish Jew estranged from his European family, and an Ethiopian Jew from tribe that no other Jew seems willing to accept, on a mission which involves the Khazars, a Turkic state which converted to Judaism, but vanished after three centuries. The two unwillingly accept a commission to take a young Khazar prince, the last survivor of the family of a deposed bek (martial leader, a sort of government CEO to the kagan’s chairperson). But they lose him to some mercenaries, who are taking him to the new bek. Except the prince persuades the mercenaries to rally his cause, and sort of builds up an army from the Muslim Khazar cities in the south of the region which the new bek had let the Vikings plunder with impunity. And… well, the big secret about the prince is pretty obvious from about a page after he’s been introduced, and the only suspense is in wondering how the two main characters can be so dumb as to not figure it out. Having said that, the history is fascinating, the characters are interesting, and, while I find Chabon’s prose a bit hit and miss, the mannered style he adopts here works well with the story. I should read more Chabon. Fortunately, I have Wonder Boys on the TBR, picked up from a charity shop at the same time as Gentlemen of the Road…

3.5 stars Quick and fun (though sometimes intensely violent) and original. Chabon surely is talented. I like the title he wanted to use, as he explains in his afterward, but I don't want to spoil it for you so I won't say it here.

If Robert E. Howard had been writing his historical adventure fiction at the beginning of the 21st century instead of toward the beginning of the 20th, this book might very well have come from his pen. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the Howard collection "Sword Woman."Still, while I'm recommending it, it's not without its flaws - some of those the same as I feel the Howard stories contain. The narrative can get bogged down in technical details that impede the flow of the tale, and the characterization is fairly basic. The 'big reveal' here is also pretty obvious right from the beginning.

This is a fun little book, but it's really not in the same category as 'Yiddish Policeman' or 'Kavalier & Clay."

I like Chabon cause despite all the talent and the awards, etc, he doesn't take himself too seriously. This short novel was a classic adventure story as they were written in the 19th century. great fun... Chabon has no bones about writing in what some call 'the genres'... this, The Final Solution, even The Yiddish Policemen's Union... all very good.Also, his afterward is worth the price of the book alone.

Well this was a boring, steaming heap of...absolutely nothing. Nothing of any interest happened in this whatsoever. I'm starting to think that the only qualifier to be a Pulitzer author is to write stuff that shows life as mundane as possible.

Wonderfully written, and of course I fall in love with books that mention Armenians in the first three pages. The story was fun and captivating, the prose beautiful and the length perfect. Good for people that like adventuresome historical fiction.

To be quite honest, I don't know what this book is supposed to be. That doesn't mean that I have been presented an interesting enigma-like book which is stretching my abilities beyond where I can normally go. What it does mean is that I can't figure out why Chabon wrote this book, what he was trying to accomplish, what need he was trying to fill, what inner desire he was trying to fill.And I can't figure out why he thought anyone else would care.The subject matter cannot be in much of anyone's wheelhouse. It is AD 950 and two travelers are roaming the Caucasus Mountains. (See, I warned you.) The story is told in an almost anachronistic style with language that borders on being uninterpretable, but readable nonetheless. (I assume this is for verisimilitude.) For such a small book there is a large cast of characters who roam in and out of the tale with little regard for how much we might care about them. In fact, everyone is appearing and disappearing so quickly that it is even hard to dredge up a moment of empathy for the central characters themselves.Those two find themselves enmeshed in war and betrayal and the clash of cultures and religions. Which should all be quite entertaining. But there is so little touch point for the reader that we just don't really care. Some people die, some live, there are surprises (not big ones – just surprises), and someone wins in the end. And the two travelers move on for more adventures.When Chabon is good, no one can touch him. But there are moments like this when I wonder why ink, paper, and sweat were expended. It is almost as if Chabon recognizes this himself because he feels the need to include an Afterword that seems to be explaining why he took on this rather strange endeavor. And that explanation is lacking, other than he seemed to want to do something different.I am not adverse to something different. What I am adverse to is an apparent exercise that gets published as if it were worth reading.Too much detail where unwarranted, too little detail to make me care, and, possibly, too a little too self-serving to a purpose that cannot be understood by anyone but the author.

A serialized novel dedicated to Michael Moorcock written as a cross between Fritz Leiber and the Count of Monte Cristo. Good, or at least an enjoyable story about two Jewish vagabonds in Central Asia around 900AD. The one missing thing that Chabon forgot (or ignored) is thta serials are usually quite long. The style requires many diversions and plot twists (read any Dumas lately?) which means it needs length. At 204 pages, give or take, he was just getting started when he had to wrap it up. An opportunity missed.

Some people would say this prose is poetic or hypnotic. I agree. The problem is that the style is so melodic I frequently found my mind wandering as the convoluted sentences washed over me in Andre Braugher's deep, mellifluous voice. So, the book is great as a sleep aid, not so great as a story. In fact, I have to say Michael Chabon's afterward was the most engaging part of the book.

Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure by Michael Chabon is self described in the Afterword as "Jews with swords!" It's set in the 10 century and if you care to slog through the H. Rider Haggard inspired prose, has lots of derring do.Frankly, beyond the concept of "Jews with swords" and the lovely line drawings that paper the book, I found the book an absolute boring chore to read. It was among the longest 200 pages I've slogged through in a good long while.The thing is, I didn't buy the friendship between these travelers. The motivation for their travels is obfuscated in excessive wordage that basically comes down to "because I said so."

I didn't read this when it appeared in installments in the Sunday New York Times magazine because I am ambivalent about Michael Chabon--The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay bored me, while The Yiddish Policemans Union delighted me. But I decided to read Gentlemen of the Road because of a short review I encountered somewhere, and I am glad I did--it is fun, a quick read, and very predictable in some ways but surprising in others. I think Chabon has tapped into something by trying to write adventure novels and look forward to seeing what he does next.

Swashbuckling Jews with swords? Who knew? Not many writers could pull this feat off, but Michael is definitely one of the few. Chabon's wit, memorable characters, and tale spinning come together in a great tale of "Gentlemen of the Road" who defend the weak, champion the intellect, and of course, revere elephants! Just read it! I couldn't put it down.

As much as I like Chabon, this one didn't do a whole lot for me. The two main characters were interesting, but I never felt that I had a grasp on their world. I started off knowing next to nothing about the region, cultures, and peoples he describes and very little in the book serves to change that. And with so much of the book having to do with the conflicts amongst diverse and often contradictory cultural assumptions, that turned what might just have been a weakness into the book's fatal flaw.

Additionally, the book has a habit of jumping around in time and space that kept the plot moving, but made the story feel somewhat fragmented. Maybe it's meant to feel somewhat episodic, but to me it just felt jarring.

Summary: Zelikman is tall, pale, and a one-time physician; his partner Amram is a broad-shouldered giant ex-soldier. They travel together through the mountains of eastern Europe making a living as mercenaries, theives, and con-men. But the area between the Black and Caspian seas was a dangerous place in the tenth century, especially when the two men find themselves as somewhat unwilling escorts to a young man who claims to be the deposed prince of the Khazar Empire, and who has a plan to begin a revolution to reclaim his rightful place.Review: One of my frequent complaints about so-called "literary fiction" is that too often it places a high value on fancy, self-indulgent language at the expense of actually telling a good story. Thus, one of the things I like best about Chabon is that he consistently manages to accomplish both.Chabon's prose is undeniably fancy, and probably also a little self-indulgent. He is a huge fan of the long, twisty sentence, and for substantial sections of this book, I was discovering at least one new-to-me vocab word ever two pages. But the prose is meant to embellish the story rather than replace it, I don't mind him messing about with the language; on the contrary, I found myself reveling in it, and able to silence the little part of myself that was going "you could say that without the three-dollar words" and just let the rhythm of prose roll around in my mind. (On a correlated note, this has the potential to be a wonderful audiobook - there are passages that are just begging to be read aloud.)But even better (to my mind, anyways) than the fancy prose was the story, which shone through even the most complicated sentence structure. This is a ripping adventure story, full of swords and horses and elephants and treachery and all sorts of fun stuff. (I mean heck, it made me bust out the adjective "ripping".) You can tell that Chabon had fun dreaming this story up, and I had fun reading it - not just for the adventure parts (which are as escapist as any "genre" fiction), but also because it's peppered with a bunch of snarkily funny bits throughout. I also really enjoyed the setting - I don't know that I've ever visited the geographical area nor the time period before in my reading, and I appreciated the fact that this book is largely historically accurate. In short, I had a really good time reading this book. For the most part, it read surprisingly quickly given the density of some of its prose, although there were a few places where I felt like something important passed by a bit too quickly, especially for readers like me who are unfamiliar with the geopolitical landscape of the time. But overall, a very enjoyable read. 4 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: I think all fans of historical fiction and/or adventure stories will enjoy this one, but it might be best for readers who secretly want escapist genre fiction while maintaining the air of "literary-ness" afforded by Chabon's name on the cover.

This was, not surprisingly as it comes from a true master, a great read. Much different than his (former?) usual, it's a fabulous adventure story, and a quick page-turner of a read. It's damn hard not to love the two unlikely would-be heroes, and let's face it, it's damn hard not to love the whole thing. The plotting & intrigue on all sides, the daring adventurers, the swindlers, the suspense...! Just an all-around fun absorbing read!

short and sweet historical adventure romp.Saw this at the library and couldn't resist..it is a story of two odd couple rogues who find themselves with a deposed prince and a kingdom to swindle.. This was real page turner, evocative of the era with a rich set of contrasting characters and fast moving plot. It also has the bonus of some wonderful old fashioned line drawings. The problem was it was just too short and I felt a bit unsatisfied.. (which is why it gets 3.5 stars!) I hear it was originally serialised in a newspaper so that explains it but hmmm don't buy it just borrow it!

This novel seems only half finished, especially when you compare it to Chabon's other efforts like Kavalier and Klay or Yiddish Policemen's Union. The transitions between chapters are jarring and the book is mostly plot with little character growth. That said, it is very entertaining pulp.What sets this book apart from other pulp lit is the seting: 10th century Kazaria. The Kazars were a people living near the Caspian Sea who adopted Judaism as their state/ethnic religion, making their kingdom an ideal seting for Chabon to examine his favorite subject--Jews living in their own world. The book revolves around Jews from various regions; one from Ethiopia (Abyssinia), a descendant of Sheba; one from a ghetto in Regensburg; and one from Kazaria itself. The setting is essential as it allows Chabon to examine how Jews react to their separate homelands. The one from Regensburg giving him a stop Jew from an Anti-Semetic are, the one from Abyssinia being a typical wandering Diaspora Jew and the Kazar giving him a Jew living in a Jewish kingdom as imagined in the Torah. The Setting is more remarkable for being true, though the events are not exactly historical. I can admit that Chabon has sparked my interest in this forgotten part of the world. This might not be his best, but for someone sympathetic to Judaism or curious in history or curious about strange regions of the world, this book is amazing.

As ever, Chabon's writing is an absolute delight to read, and there are moments of the book that are wonderful and funny. The story as a whole, however, is rather weak. It's a little difficult to follow the plot, because there are lots of weird political factions and customs involved, and a lot of exotic characters to keep straight. The book was entertaining, but not particularly memorable: it's an adventure story, and that's really all I can say for it.

Amram is a giant of a man, an African of uncertain origin, Zelikman, a Frank, tall and thin and as pale as Amram is dark; the two are travelling companions, gentlemen of the road. They make their way seeking opportunities, by cunning and deceit. Then they find themselves entrusted with the custody of Filqa, a youth who claims to be a deposed prince, and soon they are inevitably involved in helping the boy attempt to regain his kingdom. Placed in the historical setting of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Khazaria (present day Ukraine) around the 10th century, it is a fascinating story with plenty of plot twists and more than a few surprises. But the real delight of the tale is Michael Chabon’s inimitable prose; Chabon is here clearly indulging himself in his most flamboyant and fluid mode, creating combinations of words that simply roll of the page. The result is witty, entertaining and often very funny and a pure pleasure to read. Perhaps the one casualty of Chabon’s extravagant writing is that occasionally the overall sense sometime becomes confused in the abundance of words, but that is a small price to pay for the overall enjoyment. A departure from his more usual contemporary settings, the author himself admits in an interesting Afterword that he is on something of an adventure of his own with this book. He has certainly created yet another original and appealing work, this one beautifully illustrated with line drawings by Gary Gianni – a hint of Michael Chabon’s fascination with comics?